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Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort jailed for 7.5 years for conspiracy and fraud

Thu 14 Mar 2019, 4:22 AM AEDT

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A courtroom sketch depicts former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, centre in a wheelchair, during his previous sentencing hearing last week.

AP: Dana Verkouteren

United States President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been sentenced to an additional three and a half years behind bars, this time for conspiracy against the US and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Key points:

Manafort faced up to 10 years in prison, on top of an earlier four-year sentence

Just after the sentence was delivered, news broke that Manafort was indicted in New York on state charges, seen as a strategy for preventing a potential presidential pardon.

An indictment unsealed on Wednesday in Manhattan accuses Manafort of conducting a year-long residential mortgage fraud scheme that netted millions of dollars.

Mr Trump has repeatedly defended him and floated the idea of granting a pardon, but would not be able to do so in a state case.

Manafort, 69, apologised to the court for the conspiracy crimes and pleaded for the judge not to add to his prison time, saying the charges mounted against him had "taken everything from me already".

"I am sorry for what I have done and for all the activities that have gotten us here today," he said.

"While I cannot undo the past, I will ensure that the future will be very different."

He faced a maximum of 10 years — five years for each of the two conspiracy counts he pleaded guilty to last year in a cooperation deal with prosecutors that later imploded after he was found to have lied.

Judge Jackson's sentence will mark the end of a two-year legal battle between Manafort, a veteran Republican political operative who worked for Mr Trump's campaign for five months in 2016, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who made exposing Manafort's covert lobbying for pro-Kremlin politicians in Ukraine a centrepiece of his Russia probe.

Manafort's sentence last week by US District Judge TS Ellis in Virginia, where he was convicted for financial crimes, was two decades below the upper limit of federal sentencing guidelines, prompting criticism among legal experts that it was too light.

In the latest case Manafort was sentenced for conspiracy against the United States, which included a range of conduct from money laundering to unregistered lobbying, and a second count related to witness tampering.

Mr Mueller's team called Manafort a "hardened" criminal in a filing last month, arguing he should be held accountable for the "gravity" of his crimes.

Manafort's lawyers countered that their client should be given credit for admitting his guilt while also stressing that none of the Mr Mueller's charges related to the special counsel's core mandate: collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

The possibility of a presidential pardon — a prospect Trump has not ruled out — will likely continue to hang over the Manafort situation, lawyers said.